


Two Monsters

by DictionaryWrites



Series: Two Monsters In Space And Time [1]
Category: Doctor Who, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Aromantic, Aromantic Loki, Crossover, Emotional Baggage, Feels, Humor, Jokes, M/M, Riddles, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-20
Updated: 2017-05-20
Packaged: 2018-11-02 18:55:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10950672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DictionaryWrites/pseuds/DictionaryWrites
Summary: Loki meets the Doctor, once. It takes them time to part ways.This is a rewrite of the fic of the same name.





	Two Monsters

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Two Monsters](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4607811) by [DictionaryWrites](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DictionaryWrites/pseuds/DictionaryWrites). 



Loki wears a grey suit that morning, a blue tie at his neck with a shining silver pin across its middle: the pin is embossed with Mjölnir, and it reflects the light as Loki looks in the mirror. So funny, these humans – his name is, officially, Loki “Luke” Svensson, and that had inspired the gift. How could they know better?

Loki “Luke” Svensson, once embarrassed by the mythological name given to him by his eccentric Norwegian parents, is the CEO of Kuldeheim Electronics, an engineer, an artist, a tremendously intelligent creator of clever technology, is alive in the wonder of Earth's greatest; Loki Laufeyson, brother of Thor and adopted child of the now deceased Lady Frigga, is dead.

Loki had left a simulacrum of his body on that wasted planet, let Thor find it, and he had wanted to go home, wanted to take Asgard for himself – he had been in the place itself, had held the knife to his sleeping father's neck with readiness to slit his throat, but he had stared at the space where his mother would have lain, had Thor's stupid cow of a woman not necessitated her sacrifice, and--

He'd faltered.

By no means had he wished not to murder Odin – oh no, Loki might have done that easily. It was the room, the room that had once been his mother's bedroom, that had suddenly clawed at him, clawed at his heart, and he'd run away like a frightened child.

And now here he stands, with his new identity, his new species, his new face, and he blends in.

“Your car's outside, Mr Svensson,” comes the helpful voice through the intercom, and his affirmative is agreeable but vacant of tone. He adjusts his tie and pushes back the thick, blond hair about his head: his features are modelled after his mother's, in some parts, and his eyes are still blue but not so frosty. He even has a beard – he never grew a beard naturally, with his own face: eternally ergi, was Loki Laufeyson.

Loki Svensson has no such trouble.

He turns away from the mirror, then, rubbing his knuckles over his own stubble as he steps down the stairs and toward the door. He taps the pin affectionately: his assistant had bought it for him as a joke of sorts. After all, he truly is hidden in plain sight. He had taken his own first name, taken a surname with echoes of his true race to it, and even his company license papers had been put forth in a name echoing the Nine Realms.

Midgard, Asgard, Vanaheimr, Svartalheimr, Alfheimr, Jötunheimr and the rest – and now, Loki's own empire: Kuldeheimr, with the anglicized spelling. He is so very proud of his Kuldeheim.

He swipes through a series of papers as he settles in the backseat of the car, the Kuldeheim smart tablet settled upon his knee – Loki has no idea as to the car's specifics, having no care for the work of such primitive engines. He knows only that it will be replaced soon enough, with a similar work of his own design. Truly, using the dead flesh of unforgotten species as a fuel does seem strange to him, but if they choose to doom their planet it is of no consequence to him. He is, after all, unconstrained by their minuscule lifespans.

He folds the tablet into a quarter once the car stops, listening to the metallic click as its screen bends at its separations before dropping it into his inside pocket once it's no larger than a cigarette case. They're rather popular, these tablets of his – in all truth, every technology Loki has designed with Midgardian materials has become popular, and his empire spans wide.

As a child, Loki had always so enjoyed the time he laid aside for art, for seiðr, for mechanisms of his own design, but he had abandoned such things in order to play with Thor, to engage in combat and go out to explore. There had been no pressure to do so – Loki had _wished_ to spend time with his brother and his friends; Loki wished not to be lonesome.

And now, alone as he is so far from Thor, he is not lonesome at all.

He has waited so long for an empire, and now that he has one, he feels fulfilled. He cannot help but wonder, nonetheless, if his satisfaction would be more so had he stayed in Asgard as he had planned those two years ago – if he had slit the Allfather's throat and settled upon the throne he had so long desired.

Somehow, he doubts it. The Æsir live for longer, but they're not so ridiculously and annoyingly clever as these Midgardians are – so tiny are these strange creatures, and yet Loki is coming to find a certain fondness for their persistence, for their imaginations. They play with his designs, use them in ways Loki would never have imagined for himself, and their innocence, their delighted use of such complex engineering for such simple toys – in a way, Loki feels the same warmth he might when watching children at play. Midgardians keep their child-like awe well into their maturity, so it seems.

Most crucially of all, of course, Loki does so adore their worship, and they do worship him, have his image upon their walls and mantels and upon the fridges that Loki designed for their kitchens – they think he is pretty, charismatic, exciting, and they are correct.

Loki Laufeyson is dead; Loki Svensson is a _celebrity_.

“Tony Stark's here tonight, Luke,” says a chipper old fellow with an ugly blond moustache, and Loki smiles at him.

“Is he indeed?” Loki asks, and he grins. Some of them call him Luke, preferring the name this false person of his supposedly decided upon in his youth while embarrassed for his parents' silly decisions, and others call him Loki, preferring the name this false person was named upon his false birth.

Loki does not mind. He is known by a thousand names on a thousand planets, and he answers to every one, if it so suits him.

The party does not interest him, really – Loki is not feeling social as of this evening, and wishes merely to retire to his own laboratory to work upon a project or three. It's strange, this world; Loki, after all, has no claim to a kingdom or a land of his own, and yet here he stands as the head of a sort of empire, with a hundred companies beneath his own Kuldeheim. Alas, he cannot retire as he so wishes: ruling, after all, comes with its own weighty responsibilities.

But there is someone here. Someone who is not like the humans, and not even like the mutants Loki has met. Loki’s web of seiðr is constantly in effect about him, and just as an insect might pull upon a spider’s thread, Loki feels the twitch of something different. This being is so much older than those others about him, radiating stardust and the songs of distant planets, and Loki is… _Intrigued._

Their eyes meet across the room, and Loki smiles at this alien strolling about territory that is Loki's, and he raises his glass in a toast. This alien is not like the other aliens about him. This alien is not even like Thor. This alien is like Loki. A wanderer, an ancient wanderer – Loki feels it.

His eyes widen as he stares at Loki, glancing from his raised glass to Loki’s face: his eyes are bright and brown and wide, his hair is messy about his head, and he wears a pinstriped suit. And this man, this _strange_ being – he has the gall to run from Loki, and Loki is drawn in.

“Excuse me, Doctor Banner,” Loki purrs politely, having delighted for a few minutes in speaking to the man with careful double meanings, drawing out cruel reactions from the bizarrely anxious monster in false skin, but this alien is to be far, far more exciting, Loki has no doubt.

He runs fast.

\---

“What are you, then?” asks the alien, looking at Loki over glasses Loki is quite aware that he doesn't need to see (Loki doesn't need his own, but they do make him look very clever).

“Do sort out your priorities, sir,” Loki cuts through sharply, and he shoves his hand across the room in an aggressive point, “What is that?”

“ _Well_ ,” the alien says, tipping his head from the left to the right, and making some vague hand gestures as he does so. He opens his mouth, presses his lips together, and then opens his mouth again. “It’s a big alien death machine.”

“So I see. And what is it you’re planning to do about it?” Loki demands. “You’ve made your way here with such _purpose_ , and I might imagine you have some intention.”

“You're not human,” the alien complains. “You've masked your own biodata, morphed it, changed it, to look like a human and to feel like one, but you're not one – how did you _do_ that?” Energy clings to this alien's brown pin-striped suit as if it's a third skin, mildly disgusting to Loki's senses – it's a strange tasting energy, one that's strangely familiar but difficult for him to classify.

He imagines this alien and he are having a similar complication.

“There aren't many species that can sense biodata without a chemical test,” Loki replies easily, and he watches those charming brows furrow, watches him frown. He's very interesting, very interesting indeed. Especially to look at.

“But-”

“The big alien death machine ought probably be stopped,” Loki says in a casual tone. “Perhaps afterwards we might stop for coffee and a chat.” Distantly, in the back of his mind, he is irritated that he hadn’t sensed this machine – but this is what happens when one has such a party above a museum, and does not stop to examine the contents of the museum. This mine was set to explode millennia ago, and it is only bad luck that will trigger it now.

“Who _are_ you?”

“Who are _you_?” Loki returns, simply. For a moment, the other stops, and then the alien grins at him, winks, and they walk together.

\---

“My name's the Doctor,” the alien says, and Loki drops the mug of coffee on the ground. He tells himself it's just to hear the shatter of ceramic and the splatter of hot drink upon the deserted kitchen's floor, but if he were honest with himself, entirely honest with himself, it's out of shock. Of course, Loki doesn't make a habit of being honest with anyone at all, least of all with himself.

“The Doctor,” Loki repeats, and he cannot stop the soft awe creeping into his tone, cannot prevent himself from looking at this legendary thing as if Loki is a child again, and is meeting a king he's heard of only in legend before. Had he not just been thinking of the Midgardian, childlike awe? But no, this is different… Of course, the Doctor is not a king. He's a Lord of Time.

“Have you heard of me?” The Doctor's question is posed in the tone of one who has tried to prevent himself from being pleased by hearing tales of his own splendour, and has always failed the task.

“Oh, yes. I've heard six stories of your legend, Doctor. Six stories of a saviour with a blue box and a screwdriver.” The Doctor's expression is solemn, and he looks down at the coffee Loki had dropped as if for the first time, and with a wave of his hand Loki reconstitutes the mug and its contents, holding it heated between his hands once more.

The Doctor stares at him, and Loki feels an immensity buried in his chest – how many beings, Loki wonders, could reduce this wandering Lord of Time to staring at them with such lovely, wide eyes? Loki feigns innocence, taking a sip of his coffee, and then says, “You control time, do you not? I control something better.”

“What's that?” Oh, and there it is. Loki sees the hunger in his eyes: The Doctor is doing his best to stifle it, to ignore it, but there is a hunger there for a power that he does not yet possess himself.

“The beating heart of any man I meet.” The Doctor falters, surprised by the answer, and Loki laughs. He had not realised, but he has missed this sort of doublespeak. He speaks with some of the most intelligent Midgardians upon the planet on a daily basis, but he must always hold back some of the most fun things with which to play – here, there is no such constraint. “I've magic. What I would call magic. Perhaps you'd call it something less fanciful, or more so, but I call it magic because that is what it is.”

“What are you?” Loki considers telling him, for a moment, but- He heard every story of the Doctor as he travelled in his youth, from the mouths of those on far-foreign planets and realms, of this one man with a blue box who saved us, sir, he really did, and you'd never believe it but he called himself a Time Lord. Loki has books that mention him, texts and parchments and a few carved images, even, of his blue box. He'd thought him a legend, and he is; Loki has met other legends before, but none with infamy as Loki has, as the Doctor has. Loki takes another slow, thoughtful sip of his drink.

 

“Guess,” Loki says, and the smile on the Doctor's face is bright and wide and genuine, and Loki feels a flutter in his chest.

Another immortal. It's been two years since he's spoken to another immortal – and this one is not of the Æsir, and he does not hate Loki, does not know to hate him. If Loki told the Doctor his name, perhaps he would hate Loki, and for that reason Loki cannot tell him immediately. Loki, it seems, is hated universally, by now. He cannot bear to be hated by a man like this. He cannot bear it.

“Magic doesn't exist, you know.”

“And Gods? What of them? Do they exist?”

“I don't believe in Gods,” the Doctor tells him. “What's this, then? Loki Svensson? I can feel you – you're immortal. I can feel your-” the Doctor makes a vague motion with all the fingers on his right hand, wiggling them back and forth. “Impact. You're old. Very old. You’re all over the timeline.”

“So are you. I can see it in those lovely eyes of yours,” Loki replies, and then says, “It's a pseudonym. I'm sure you've one of your own – these humans are so easily startled by certain titles.” It's a half-lie, but that hardly matters – this Time Lord is clever enough to play a game without knowing its rules and pieces.

“Oh, tell me about it,” the Doctor says, and they chuckle together, sharing that joke of wandering gods, immortal travellers, and suddenly Loki feels strangely at home, despite being realms away from a home he will never be able to return to. “D'you like it here, then? Earth?”

“I've an empire,” Loki says, as if it's an answer, knowing that it is not one, and that the Doctor will not recognize it as one either.

“That's a no, then.” says the Doctor, and his gaze is so very piercing as it lays hot on Loki's face, but Loki can't entirely complain – it's rather attractive, actually, that stare, but he supposes propositioning a being of legend might be rather presumptuous, even for him.

Not until after they've finished their coffees, anyway.

“I'm growing to like the inhabitants,” Loki says, and it's not exactly a lie. He had miscalculated, once, believed them to be the same stupid creatures they had been when he and his family had been loved by their Vikings, but they've progressed so quickly in so little time, making up for their tiny, tiny life spans. They evolve so swiftly, and yet they're all so stupid, at times. Their oil, their coal, their little wars… “Clever little things, if short-sighted.”

“Well, s'not really fair to make me guess, if I'm not going to see you again,” the Doctor says, drumming his fingers on the side of his mug. He turns his gaze from Loki, looking around the room with a bland curiosity, his gaze falling over Loki’s half-completed designs. “Seems a bit unfair.”

“Life's unfair, Doctor,” Loki says. “But you might always visit.”

“Or you can come with me,” the Doctor says, trying to be casual about the offer. He must be lonely, Loki thinks. The stories talk about his companions, always, talk about his having friends alongside him, but Loki has seen no such thing today, so young lady or young fellow beside him, of any species at all. “Could do with a pair of hands. Experienced hands. Hands which're, you know. Used to alien death machines.”

“I can hardly leave,” Loki says coyly, tapping his fingers upon his mug. He _couldn’t_. “I've an empire.”

“It'll keep, course it will.” the Doctor says. There’s a slight twist to his mouth – Loki feels, somehow, that he does not approve of empires, that he does not approve of Loki, but his curiosity is overwhelimg it. “And I don’t know if you know this,” the Doctor’s tone is just as coy as Loki’s, “but I can travel in time as well. They’ll never know you’re gone.”

Loki looks at the Doctor. That strange energy calls to him, as new and odd things have always done, ever since he was but a young man, and he walked across the universe on seiðr-light feet. Loki sets down his mug.

“Very well, Doctor. Let us go.” The Doctor’s beam could light constellations, and Loki has to move quickly to chase him from the room.

\---

“I'm not stepping into that thing,” Loki hisses, and the Doctor laughs, leaning back against the TARDIS' blue hull and smiling at him, hands in his pockets and chin raised in amusement. Loki stands ten metres away, staring at him with a quiet horror on his features, unable to take the other man's mirth at all casually.

“You can feel her, can't you?” The Doctor's question comes with a sort of quiet excitement, a delight in Loki's realization, and Loki becomes aware that most of those he travels with haven't ever realized that this blue box is a living creature. Loki does feel her, feels the pulse of her lifeforce with a foreign energy so similar and yet so different to the seiðr he plays with every day and every night – it's time energy, pure and uncomfortably called to order by a much higher power than the God himself.

“This is how you travel, then. With her time energy.”

“You don't like how it feels?” The Doctor asks. He carries it himself, of course, but it doesn't pulse so strongly from his two hearts as it does from this colossal monster's core – it revolts Loki, repulses him, but it is easier to stand, not so overpowering as this.

“I am a being of chaos, Doctor,” Loki says, knowing it to be true, and then says, “Your energy is anything but.”

“Of course it's chaotic,” the Doctor argues, frowning slightly and furrowing those brows of his, his lips parted as he displays his teeth in thought, and his hands pop up for those infuriating gestures as he says, “Time-”

“No. To you, perhaps, with your mighty knowledge of time, your legendary title, but to me, it's order in its purest form. Sickening, really.” Loki speaks conversationally, and he can see the Doctor stare at him, see him trying to work it out in that glorious brain of his.

“What sort of alien are you?” The Doctor asks, because he wants to know what Loki is, but he hasn't yet worked it out – the Doctor has never been to Loki's part of the galaxy, Loki knows, never met with the Æsir or the Jötnar or the Vanir, and so when he tastes the air and tries to glean what Loki is from his chemistry, he can't find a match. It makes Loki feel so powerful, so exotic, to know so great a thing as a Time Lord cannot comprehend him, and so, so lonely.

So lonely.

“The sort you want to feed to your blue beastie, evidently,” Loki says. The Doctor laughs, and then puts forth his hand for Loki to take. Loki feels ill with it, sick with it, with the pulse of that awful, awful rule of time, so incompatible with his very being, but he wishes to go somewhere, wishes to adventure somewhere he has not been before.

“Come on.” The Doctor's invitation comes to him with a jibe to it, teasing, sharp, perfectly provocative: strangely enough, Loki is reminded of Thor. He has not seen Thor in so, so long, and he aches for the company of his brother, for the love of him, but Thor would not love him if he knew Loki were alive, and he would not offer Loki his hand except to lead him to a prison cell. “You can't not come with me now.”

“No,” Loki whispers quietly, and he puts out his hand, takes the Doctor's hand and feels how very warm it is in his own. Every fibre of his body screams that he should run from this creature, every basic instinct insisting that this monstrous traveller will be the death of him, and yet--

The Doctor is right. Of course he is.

And so Loki holds his hand and they step forwards as if to dance together, with the Doctor's hand clasping about Loki's in a way Loki's hand has not been held in centuries upon centuries – when was the last time he danced with a man? Some time ago, Loki remembers, with a beautiful man upon Midgard when Loki was yet so young, with bright eyes and a blue cravat and a mistaken belief that Loki would fall in love with him.

Loki steps onto the golden floor of this TARDIS' heart, hearing the quiet sound of his expensive human shoes on the metal grate, and Loki breathes in, breathes in the scents that cling to the Doctor's suit, and he almost feels like sobbing because so many of them are oh-so familiar with him – he tastes planets that have been dead for decades, smells fruits and flowers from far across the galaxy, feels softly flowing energies beneath that dastardly continuation of time.

“For a monster,” he whispers, and he looks up into this creature's pulsing heart, watching the blue shift of pipework at its centre, “You are rather lovely.” He receives a response he doesn't understand: a soft hum and a pulse of some foreign energy that reverberates in his chest, and he frowns, tilting his head as the Doctor snickers.

Some private insult, then.

“She says you're the monster,” the Doctor translates for him, unhelpfully. “She won't tell me who you are, of course.”

“She's not wrong,” is all Loki says, softly and mostly to himself, and he reaches out with his left hand as he lets Loki go, caressing the glass of the console in the TARDIS' central room: he's rewarded with a shift of time that honestly hurts his fingers, makes them burn, but it does not hurt him enough for him to draw away. “I repulse her as I repulse you, don't I?”

“Who says you repulse me?” the Doctor asks, frowning at him as he moves to the console and begins pressing buttons and twisting dials. He dislikes to be read so easily: Loki would not like it himself. When one is used to being the mystery that walks from place to place, it is unsettling to be known.

“No one,” Loki says. “It showed on your face when I first spoke to you, when you paid attention to me. A moment of revulsion. If it pleases you, Doctor, I feel a similar discomfort.”

“Because I'm not chaotic,” the Doctor says in a moment of comprehension, with a nod of his clever head. “And yet you've come with me.” He says it with a simple smile, as if Loki's presence is some sort of charming blessing. Silly man, truly. Silly man with a blue box.

Loki seats himself upon the tired, dilapidated bench beside the console, and he feels the pulse of her. Very strange, really, very strange indeed.

“She's called the TARDIS,” the Doctor says as he steps about her again; as he pushes hard on a lever, Loki feels Midgard melt suddenly away from around her hull – they're dropping through time space, and it's astonishingly bizarre, this sort of travel: it's not the same as Skywalking, much faster, but he likes it. It's exciting. “Time and Relative Dimension in Space.”

“Time and space travel – what a luxury. I'd never warp time so easily,” Loki says lowly, and the TARDIS hums at him in a way that makes Loki believe he is being scolded. Loki swears at her in the tongue of the Jötnar, frost forming on his lips, and he sees the Doctor's head whip around as she gives a pause of perplexity. And then she responds, with another hum, and Loki huffs out a sound.

“What language was that?” the Doctor demands, staring at him, and Loki laughs.

“Don't you understand it? You silly man – all that knowledge, and you don't know so simple a tongue?” Loki _crows_ with the little victory, although he ought not.

“Tell me what it is and I'll learn it,” the Doctor says, and excitement comes back into his dulcet tones, thrilling through each word, “I don't hear a language I don't know very often.” He turns his head, then, as if listening to something the TARDIS is saying, and then he says, “She translates for people, she does. It's a sort of psychic link. Says she can't get in.” Ah. So he understood the word, but did not know the tongue in his own right – how darling.

“She doesn't need to,” Loki says pleasantly. “I've no need of her translation. There is no tongue in this universe I do not comprehend.” The Allspeak is magic, after all, and Loki needs only to be taught written scripts, and never a spoken word.

“You are fascinating,” the Doctor says, putting his elbows on the TARDIS' console and peering at Loki with a grin on his features, his eyes bright with pleasure. “You are brilliant.”

“I'm a puzzle. You wish to decode me.”

“Doesn't make you any less terrific.”

“No,” Loki agrees. “It doesn't, at that.” The universe around them comes to a sudden stop, and Loki feels the vortex of time fade away, like- Like the Bifrost. Just like the Bifrost. But then, the Bifrost could never travel with time – and why would they want it to?

“You look sad,” says the Doctor, regarding Loki with those big, lovely brown eyes of his. They betray his age in a way no wrinkle ever could, Loki is well aware, just as his own do to the untrained or unfocused eye.

“So do you,” Loki responds, and the Doctor opens his mouth, closes it, then nods his head. “I recognize the planet out there. It's chilly – you ought pick up a coat.” He sees the momentary, almost microscopic twitch in The Doctor’s expression: Loki can feel the planet outside, of course, with his web of seiðr, but The Doctor cannot know that.

“I don't need one,” the Doctor says, and then asks, “Do you want to borrow one?”

“No,” Loki answers simply. “Your first clue, my dear Doctor. I come from a place of cold. I thrive in it.” It's not fair, not fair at all, but it so amuses him to offer forth his silly little clues, and although he knows it isn’t wise, he sees the Doctor take the provocation.

“Oh, I'll work it out,” The Doctor promises him, with a moment of aggression, and Loki grins.

“Not before I tell you.”

“Tell me now.”

“And spare you the fun?”

They're both grinning, now, grinning at each other even as Loki stands and shrugs his shoulders with his hands in his pockets, turning his suit from grey to green with a moment's thought and tying back his hair. The Doctor watches the colour seep through the fabric with a curious focus, and then says, “I'll never get tired of that.”

Loki chuckles, and inwardly prays that he doesn't.

\---

“So you're magic,” the Doctor says with an inkling of derision, “And you're old. Ancient. Are you-- Krillitane?”

“Don't insult me, Doctor,” Loki chides him as he settles in his seat. “You can feel enough of my biodata to determine that, can you not? You know I'm hardly so simple a thing.” And it does insult him, somewhat – the idea of being like so disgusting a cannibalistic race, but he doesn't say so. He imagines he doesn't need to.

“How old are you?”

“I'll tell you mine if you tell me yours.”

“Nine hundred and four.”

“Oh, you positive babe in arms,” Loki teases, and the Doctor laughs, a slight flush pinkening those cheeks of his, and Loki then says, “Nearing two millennia, now. Perhaps a century and a half away.”

“Old man,” the Doctor says.

“Not really.”

“Well, a millennium and a-”

“I meant about being a man,” Loki interrupts him, and he winks. The Doctor smiles at him, the expression a charming sight, a very charming sight indeed.

“Oh,” the Doctor says. “Fair enough.”

“Have you another guess, Doctor?” Loki asks.

“Nah. Not for now.”

\---

“You have your own room, you know,” the Doctor says awkwardly as Loki follows him. Both of them are wet above the neck, their respective hair soaked by the storm outside, and Loki doesn't feel cold, but the Doctor does, Loki knows. “You've slept in it for a few weeks now. You've got a bed, a wardrobe, a fireplace-”

“I asked her for the fireplace. You don't get to take credit for that,” Loki says smoothly as he follows the Doctor down and down these long, winding corridors – it frustrates the TARDIS, Loki knows, that Loki can find his way through the foreign paths with a relative ease, even when she rearranges whole wings just to try and force him to get lost. He is beginning to understand her personality, beginning to understand her as she understands him, and he believes that it frustrates her, infuriates her.

“I'm still surprised she gave it to you,” the Doctor says, trying to pretend he's not uncomfortable and unsure. He doesn’t look at him, and instead keeps his gaze forcefully forwards, because he is scared, perhaps, or because he is merely anxious.

“I said please.”

“I say please, when I-”

“No, you don't.”

“Not always.”

“Not most of the time.”

“Why are you following me?”

“You're going to bed, aren't you?”

“Yes.”

“I'm coming with you.” The Doctor turns to glance at him, but he doesn't push Loki away, doesn't slap him, doesn't say no or complain. They just walk together, until they reach the room, and the Doctor begins to strip off his clothes. He faces away from Loki to do so, and Loki mimics him, throwing off his suit until he's naked.

Loki doesn't look at the contents of the Doctor's room, doesn't look at anything except for the bed; he slides into it beside the Doctor as the lights turn out. He feels the other man tense beside him, stiff as a board, but Loki simply lies on his side and closes his eyes.

“Now, Loki,” the Doctor says in a stern tone bordering on hopeful, “No funny business.” Loki ignores him, and within a few minutes more he's comfortably asleep beside the Doctor in the Time Lord's own bed.

It's a blasphemy, perhaps. Well, perhaps. Definitely.

\---

He likes sleeping with the Doctor. It's casual, comfortable, and it affords a quiet intimacy Loki so rarely enjoys. They do not often touch each other, in the first few days, and then Loki begins to slide closer to him, and the Doctor begins to touch his hair or stroke his arms, settle with the both of them close together.

Loki does not love as some do. Never has he felt himself in love with someone, wishing to please them at every turn or offer them flowers for the sake of their smile, or anything so similarly banal. This has always left a rift between himself and Thor, but the Doctor does not complain or argue.

They do not hold hands or take together wine and candlelit dinners: they are not lovers.

Loki has fucked people, here and there, but never has he loved as Thor has loved women, and never has he wanted to. The Doctor has, Loki imagines, but Loki knows when the other man watches him that he does not crave Loki's love, but perhaps his touch, his intimacy, his affection.

They are friends. It is as simple, and as complicated, as that.

Loki wonders, sometimes, what the Doctor is thinking of when he lies on his side and watches Loki in the middle of the night, when Loki feigns a deep sleep and the Doctor thinks he has peace with which to watch him. He wonders, of course, but he never asks: it would ruin the deception, it would ruin many things.

Loki will not take silly risks and gamble that which he has claimed for himself.

\---

“Try it,” the Doctor says, and Loki peers at the bowl of steaming liquid. It is completely lacking in scent, but it's warm and deeply blue, radiating a comforting heat, and Loki cups the bowl in his hands to peer at it for a few moments, glancing at the other man for more information. The Doctor does not proffer any. “Try it.”

Loki leans, putting his lips against the side of the bowl and taking a sip of the thick, blue liquid, and then he spits it out. “It's sweet! It's a dessert, you bastard-”

The Doctor is laughing at him, and Loki slams the candied soup upon the wooden surface, trying to spit out the awful, sugary taste, and the Doctor grins at him, so amused is he, finding it so very, very funny. Loki cannot stand sweets.

But for a few people, only the Doctor knows that.

“You're a horrible, unpleasant man.” Loki means it. And he doesn't. The Doctor hates Loki sometimes, Loki knows – Loki can kill with ease, push forth the idea of murder without so much as a second thought, and it doesn't bother him because why ought it? It's only life. It's only death.

Loki isn’t a stupid man, and never has he taken too many risks with the lives of those about them: the Doctor, Loki had known from the beginning, was opposed to violence and killing, and yet Loki knows that one day, it will undoubtedly be different, or that in the past, it was – he has heard too many such stories to think otherwise.

And yet—

There are parts of Loki that desire to murder and kill, to rip the flesh of those they meet to pieces, to spatter blood upon the walls and paint the town, quite literally, in red. These parts of him, Loki suppresses.

“Oh, I know,” the Doctor says affectionately, but he doesn’t. He does not hate Loki at this very moment, but he does, sometimes, and it terrifies Loki to consider – will there come a day, Loki wonders, when the Doctor begins to hate him and never stops? Will there come a day when they never speak again? “Not like you are.”

“And who am I?” Loki asks. He has to ask. Because on the day the Doctor knows, surely he will hate Loki more than he ever has and in a way that will never stop – surely he will loathe Loki as all the people of Asgard do.

“Give me time. I'll work it out.”

“You've had weeks,” Loki says. He’s had _months_. The Doctor grins at him.

“I need a few more.”

\---

Fixed points in time Loki comprehends. The Doctor had explained them the first time they'd set foot upon a planet amidst a burning war, and Loki had well comprehended the concept; it had been months ago, easy enough to understand, and Loki had simply taken the knowledge in.

The Doctor, with his great capacity for sympathy, is more hurt by it than Loki.

And today it's been humans – the Doctor's favourite, of course – in some big terrible catastrophe. Nuclear bombs, so Loki knows, are the worst of humanity's creations, and now the Doctor is so very melancholy.

It's not been a good day. Loki isn't tired, but he can feel the fatigue radiating from the other man in irritable waves. Loki is not an empathetic being, by nature; he doesn't much care for the feelings of most beings, and yet the Doctor's exasperation is tangible, so strong it tugs at the strings of the heart Loki often forgets he has.

He desires to comfort him, if only to make the uncomfortable almost-guilt go away.

“It hurts, doesn’t it? Seeing such fleeting things go. They pity the mayfly on Earth, as if they themselves are any different, with their short little lives.” They’re sat side by side, and the Doctor’s feet dangle from the precipice and into space, one of Loki’s feet doing the same with the other folded under his body. The TARDIS thrums behind them, quiet, rhythmic. It would be comforting if being so close to so bizarre a beast did not remind Loki of the best of his children, didn’t make him yearn for a home he cannot return to – not even if the traveller beside him offered.

Before them, the sun compacts upon itself, so slow and yet so fast as its drawn inwards in a silent, beautiful explosion: Loki can feel the tremors of it, even from as far away as they are, sliding across space, and he lets out a very soft sigh. He understands why the Doctor had picked such a sight for them to take in, given recent events: he wishes to remind himself of the cycle of the universe, of the beauty in such destructions, but it doesn’t seem to be having much of an effect. “It used to upset me, when I was very young.”

The confession spills from his mouth as if his lips are stained and loosened with wine, but he doesn’t stop his traitorous and yet silver tongue from offering a secret or two, not when he can feel the ghosts of the dying sun’s warmth echo through his chest, not when he can see it crumble. The Doctor glances at him, his expression thoughtful, quietly thoughtful. The fatigue is still there on his face, but it's changed, somewhat – his face is raised, at least.

“We watched a star die, and I wept for it. My brother skinned his knee, and I sobbed so loudly for his pain my mother didn’t realize I’d done worse to my own arms until I bled upon her dress. I wept for dying stars, and dead horses, and plants that never flowered, even when the spring came. There was a time when tears flowed so freely from my eyes you’d think me an infant fountain.” He had been so very young, and yet he remembers it all so clearly, so plainly – he is glad he had grown out of such tears by the time Thor was old enough to tease him for them.

He breathes out, slowly, and then he smiles turning to the other man with that terrible expression curving his lips, brightening his blue eyes, and says, “But you do learn, do you not? We die, and we are reborn. All the most beautiful things span from impermanence. The most beautiful flowers, music, art, the most beautiful lives, no? Those humans that you so adore?” He opens his mouth to speak on, lips parting, but then he stops – he cannot reveal too many specifics, cannot tell the Doctor that which is too sensitive, that which will show him too much.

The Doctor is meant to guess, after all. Loki looks out to the dying sun across the space, and he pushes himself forwards, ignoring the sharp protest of “Loki-” from his companion. He is so far from home, and from his family, and it’s been so long since he has done this, but he walks upon the sky, and he Skywalks, and he does not breathe, for he does not need to. He stands, just for a second or two, watching the muted conflagration across the sky, and he looks back, offering the Time Lord his hand.

Can they not be equals? A prince of Asgard, a lord of Time, two monsters wearing faces so different to those they were born with, and together watching a star die.

“Come, Doctor. Walk with me,” Loki asks softly, offering a smile. The Doctor looks at him with such awe upon his features Loki thinks he might just burst under the beauty of that wonderful, wonderful gaze. “Come now. You can't not.” The symmetry seems to speak to the Time Lord, and something in his saddened features softens.

“I can't,” the Doctor agrees, and he stands up, hesitating for a moment before he takes Loki's hand as Loki had taken his all those months ago – this time, of course, it is Loki's hand over the Time Lord's, for Loki shall lead this dance. He gets the strange idea that they've danced before, a sort of bizarre nostalgia, déjà vu, but they never have, so it hardly matters. It's just one of those inklings, magic trying to tell him something he has no business knowing. “This is fabulous.”

“Isn't it?” Loki grins.

“You're not breathing.”

“I don't need to,” Loki says. “I can, if it suits me, but I don't need to.” It's one clue too many. He's offered too much.

“But we're in space,” the Doctor says irritably, stamping his foot on a solid surface that isn't ground and patting one of his two hearts. “ _I_ need to breathe.”

“Ah, but you forget,” Loki murmurs as he draws one of the Doctor's hands to his hips as he pushes their chests together and settles one of his hands upon the Doctor's shoulder, setting them into the perfect pose for a waltz. “I'm magic.”

“I told you I don't believe in magic,” the Doctor says, but he doesn’t say it with any real irritation. He says it distractedly, clutching at Loki tightly as he searches the space around them, his eyes focused within himself.

“Do you believe in me? We are dancing in space,” Loki says pleasantly, just to point it out. He sees it click in the Doctor's mind, and he doesn't like the sudden comprehension that dawns on his features. He doesn't like it at all.

“We're not,” the Doctor says softly.

“Of course we are,” Loki says, desperately. He all but _begs_ , and the Doctor ignores him.

“We're not dancing. We're walking.” No. No, no, no, not now-

“In space,” Loki pleads, but the Doctor is shaking his head, looking right into Loki’s eyes with his own deep, ageless, immortal ones.

“On air. In the sky. Skywalking.” Loki tries to pull away, turning his face to the ground that isn't there, but the Doctor grasps tightly at his hand and at his hip, holding them so they're still flush against each other. The grip is so tight that it almost hurts, because Loki has masked his physical form somewhat, and he lacks the density to his flesh he would have as his antural self. “Oh, that's clever,” the Doctor whispers, his breath hot against Loki's neck – perhaps that's why it's worth breathing, that sensation upon the skin. “You just used your own name. Hid yourself right in plain sight, no one ever noticed.

“Never. Why would they? I'm dead, you know,” Loki whispers, and he's terrified for a second or two that the Doctor is about to let him go and leave him in dead space beside a dying star, but the Doctor is looking at him with that obscene wonder and awe on his features again.

“Why Earth? Why Kuldeheim- oh, Kuldeheim-”

“It's obvious once you think about it, isn't it?” Loki says breathlessly, trying to tease and failing because his voice comes out brittle and sharp. Yes, his Kuldeheim, giving the impression that it is one of the true realms of the universe, yes, his name, obvious in plain sight, yes, _him!_ A deception spanning the galaxy!

“Completely obvious. I'm an idiot.”

“Yes, I agree.”

“Oi!” Loki laughs with a sort of quiet hysteria, and they laugh together with their noses brushing, the intimacy strange and out-of-place and yet so, so fitting. Loki feels bizarrely comfortable like this, holding another immortal's hand and dancing with him in the vacuum of a starry sky.

“I wanted an empire.” Loki whispers. “That’s all I ever wanted, Doctor.”

“So you built one.” the Doctor says softly, as if he understands, but Loki knows that he does not.

“So I built one,” Loki agrees. They're swaying together, he notices, truly dancing now even though there is no music playing but the rhythmic thrum of the TARDIS' core. “Are you going to take me home?” He's scared. He's never been so very scared in his life. And what is he frightened of? He was not alone, back on Midgard – he had people.

But not immortals. Not people like him.

“It's not your home, is it?” the Doctor asks in one of those irritating moments of dawning cognizance, and it hits Loki like a slap in the face.

“Why should I have a home? _You_ don't have one.” It's too vicious, really, but the Doctor doesn't flinch away this time, and they stay together, stay swaying in an endless dance. There's a short pause.

“No. Not unless you want to go back,” Loki stares at the other man's face, at the sadness of those ancient, deeply brown eyes. It surprises him, somehow, that this empathetic Doctor should care so much that he has left him. So much care in him, this Doctor. He doesn’t know what to say, doesn’t know if he should thank the man or beg him to reconsider – should the Doctor not know better? Should he not cast Loki into that dying star and abandon him there?

“Do you have children, Doctor?” Loki asks, desperate to change the subject, and desperate not to stray too far.

“I did, once.” the Doctor says quietly, and Loki hears the music from inside the TARDIS beginning to play – music Loki does not know the name of, from Midgard. He wonders what had happened to the Doctor’s children – had they been killed, slaughtered, as some of Loki’s own? Had it been disease, strife, war, or murder? Or had it been something worse? “How about you?”

“Yes,” Loki says softly. “Once.” The mirror between them is unseen, and he has no wish to draw attention to it.

“They're all gone now?” the Doctor asks in that so full of empathy and sorrow. He sounds like Thor. It makes Loki want to weep – most of all, perhaps, because the Doctor is quite innocent of any crime ever done against Loki, and Thor can claim no such thing.

“Not all gone. Some of them are alive,” Loki murmurs.

“But it's not the same.”

“It's not the same,” Loki agrees, and he breathes in. He doesn't afford himself the false pocket of air he'd made for the Doctor – he just breathes in, feels the cool of nothingness as he makes his lungs work for no reason at all, and the Doctor arches an eyebrow at him. “We should go inside. I need some air.”

The Doctor laughs, laughs a stupid, stupid guffaw, and he lets Loki draw him back to the floor of the TARDIS again. Loki and the Doctor walk as one across the grate of the floor, and Loki moves to let go of the Doctor's hand, but once again the Doctor holds it fast and pulls him close again.

“Doctor, really, must you be so-” They're very close. They're very close again, but they're not dancing this time, and the Doctor is staring down at Loki with that too-close, attractive gaze of his again, and Loki can breathe again, technically, but he doesn't really want to. There’s something strange, something intense in the gaze that Loki has never seen before, and the room is fraught with tension. “Doctor.”

“Loki,” the Doctor murmurs.

“You oughtn't-” And then the Doctor's lips are on Loki's and he's kissing a Time Lord, two legends in a terrible embrace and Loki feels like sobbing even as he grasps tight at the fabric of the other man's suit and presses himself closer. They kiss for a long time, a silent eternity, and then they part and Loki says, “You really can't kiss me like that without planning some continuation.” He says it savagely, like an accusation, hoping his tone will ward the Doctor off, but it has no such effect.

“I'm planning to.” The Doctor speaks gravely, and Loki’s heart _soars_ with gratitude, with delight, with terror, with arousal, with—

But the Doctor can’t. He can’t sully himself with Loki, he _can’t_. It’s bad enough that the Doctor has let himself bring Loki with him through the universe like a favourite pet, even though Loki is savage and cruel and doesn’t deserve it.

The Doctor smiles at him, smiles the softest, sweetest smile Loki has ever seen, encouraging Loki in a way that oughtn’t be done, and he leads Loki from the console room and into the corridor. As if resigning herself to what is to happen and wishing to bring the event to a head as quickly as possible, the TARDIS lays the door to their bedroom right before them, not making them weave through corridors, and Loki tries to linger in the doorway, but the Doctor pulls him once more into one of those crushing, passionate kisses, and Loki lets himself be taken in.

\---

Loki lies on his side in the Doctor's bed, and he breathes out, quietly: the Doctor is behind him, his chest and belly hot against the flesh of Loki's back, and his breath pleasant against the back of his neck. He's had sex with men before, had sex with women before, had sex with many, many beings.

Not one person has ever clutched at Loki as the Doctor had, his fingers so tightly pressed into the flesh of his shoulders he might have left bruises, had Loki still been taking on the faux, thin flesh of his almost-human form. But Loki hadn't; Loki had allowed his flesh its own density the moment the Doctor had realized the truth, let every change he'd made in his body fade into a proper form.

The Doctor had held him tighter, held him with that passionate embrace, and he had breathed stardust into Loki’s mouth, stole the ancient songs from Loki’s lips, drawn his fingers over Loki’s ribs and his deepest secrets, touched him, _touched_ him— Loki feels as if he has been cleaved open, as if his very soul is on display, and despite his affection, despite his _trust_ of the man beside him, he despises the feeling. It feels _sore_.

“How do you feel?” the Doctor asks softly, the words whispering forth and cutting through the silence of the room. Loki can feel the time energy coiled in the other man's figure, but it no longer repulses him as it had done – it comforts him, in some ways. He's used to it. It is, quintessentially, what the Doctor is made of, and it's a comfort. Some of it lingers inside Loki himself.

“Wet,” Loki answers. A soft snort that brushes against the back of Loki’s neck and tickles through his hair. The Doctor wanted a different answer, one Loki was not willing to give.

The silence returns. After all, what right do they have to speak, after what they've done together? It won't happen again. Loki is well aware it will not happen again, that it could never happen again, and a sort of quiet self-loathing echoes through his form as he lies there, not because it will never happen again, but because there is a part of him that _desires_ such a blasphemy.

 ---

“We could see them, you know,” the Doctor says. Loki despises himself for not having sensed the Doctor’s presence, and he slams his tablet shut, setting the stylus aside. He had been indulging in a simple painting, made so easy by the programs one can download (or design) for the Midgardian technology, and he had been so focused on this petty distraction he hadn’t heard the Doctor creep up behind him.

He remembers the day clearly, remembers how Valí had laughed as he had tumbled through the tall, golden grass, and how Narfi had chased him – how the sun had shone on their freckled, youthful features and their shining red hair. How they had giggled when Loki and Sigyn both had chased them, how they had clutched at Loki’s legs when it was time for them to leave.

Valí had fallen asleep in Loki’s arms, his little head a pleasant weight on Loki’s shoulder, and Narfi had taken a similar slumber upon Loki’s lap. That day had been the last day he had ever seen Sigyn smile.

“What?” Loki says, irritably. The Doctor’s eyes look slightly red, and the slightest of moisture is plain at their corners.

“Your children.”

“Do not speak to me of my children,” Loki says, sharply, with a tone of _betrayal_ , and the Doctor stares at him. “Just because _you_ cannot comprehend a fixed point in time, Doctor, does not mean I cannot.”

“You can’t change anything,” the Doctor admits, his hands clenched into his fists at his sides. “You can’t. But you could see them, talk to them – they’d never know, _you_ , back then, would never know. You’d be able to- to hug them, kiss them. One last time.”

“I don’t think you know, Doctor,” Loki says in a harsh whisper, “how cruel you can be.” He sweeps from the room, feeling that cleaved-open sensation once again, and he walks through the winding corridors of the TARDIS, hiding himself within her depths, in such a way that he knows the Doctor will not follow.

Her distant song sweeps over him, pulsing over his skin when he leans against a wall, and he presses his cheek against her, his fingers stretched out to touch her. He understands her, although he cannot understand her tongue.

 _He didn’t mean to_. _He is old, and yet young. He didn’t mean to_.

“I know,” Loki whispers. “I know.”

 ---

Loki swims easily up the length of the pool, ignoring the occasional wave that hits him as a result of their distortion in space – he has yet to determine whether the Doctor’s casual and uncautious abuse of the TARDIS controls is as a result of a daredevil streak or simply stupidity, but he has read the scraps of manual he has managed to find from cover to cover, and he knows that at times, the Doctor most _certainly_ does it wrong.

Of course, she keeps it from ending too terribly.

Loki kicks off the end of the pool, swimming on his back toward the other end. He has missed such exercise as this, simple and meaningless, and when he reaches edge of the pool again, he sinks like a stone to the base tiles, on his back and looking up at the watery ceiling above him.

After a few minutes of this quiet contemplation, a brown blob leans over him, peering down at him in the water.

Loki waves.

The blob waves back.

Kicking himself from the floor, Loki swims up and towards the surface, coming to the edge of the pool. He looks at the Doctor’s red trainers, reaching out and drawing his two wet fingers over the fabric of the shoes, watching it darken with moisture.

“Oi! Loki!” the Doctor scolds him, but he doesn’t move away, and Loki tilts back his head to look at him properly. The Doctor is smiling in that way he does when he doesn’t know what to think of Loki, when he thinks he ought be in control, but isn’t certain of how to take it. Perhaps it’s because Loki’s naked; perhaps it is because he is wet.

Perhaps it is because Loki will live for thousands of years, and the Doctor cannot yet fathom the reality of it.

“We’ve landed,” the Doctor says. “It’s a nice little spot. You, uh, might want to dry off.”

“You think I’ll be cold?”

“I think you’ll steam.” Loki smiles, finding this response amusing, and he pulls himself from the water. Standing before the Doctor, continuing to smile, he lets steam rise from his form in clouds, lets the unnatural heat dry his body thoroughly, and with speed.

The Doctor crosses his arms, _tuts_ , and rolls his eyes. It’s beginning to go away from him, finally, that tired upset that had lingered with him for so long – soon, Loki knows, the Doctor will be quite healed of what had passed between them, of Loki’s rejection of him. Loki doesn’t believe he will ever recover himself.

“Show-off.”

“Who, me?”

 ---

“Let me show you something,” Loki murmurs, quietly: the melancholy is gone from the Doctor now, the melancholy and the desperate, desperate exhaustion of a man with the universe upon his shoulders. Or, at least, they are hidden from view: Loki doubts such heavy things will ever truly be gone from the Doctor, even if he hopes and hopes and prays and prays to a Creator he doesn't believe in.

The Doctor watches Loki  as he steps around the TARDIS console, flicking switches and pressing buttons and twisting dials, and he can feel the TARDIS simultaneously approving and disapproving of the consistency and certainty with which he does so, but she makes no comment. Loki wouldn't understand it if she did, of course. He never does. He never will. Why would she let him?

Dimly, he is aware that some of the Doctor’s melancholy has been transferred to himself.

They move through the vortex once more, and Loki feels the familiar space outside of the TARDIS doors, and he watches the Doctor. The Doctor is staring at him, his expression uncertain, and Loki smiles at him.

“You're going to love this,” Loki promises, and he knows, knows, that the Doctor will. “You're going to drop to your knees and worship me from head to foot.” It's said with all the sexual innuendo he can pack into the words, and the Doctor laughs – they can laugh about it, now: it’s been long enough. There's no worry: only shame.

Thankfully, neither of them have the grace to admit it, and subsequently, Loki knows, they will never have to address it.

 “I doubt that,” the Doctor murmurs with a quirk of his lips.

“Just you wait.” Loki steps forwards, making his way to the TARDIS and pushing open the doors. It takes a moment, and then the magic begins to do its work: the candles begin swiftly enough to light themselves and offer warm and pleasant illumination to the hall about them.

“What could possibly-” Loki watches the Doctor as his mouth drops open and his eyes become suddenly wide. He steps out from the TARDIS, looking out and around, turning in little circles on Loki’s red carpet, and Loki steps out behind him, watching his back. The ceiling is three hundred feet above them, and the walls are parted by a distance of twenty feet in this corridor, the shelves stretching higher and higher above their heads.

“That's a lot of books,” the Doctor says, admiringly.

“I like books,” Loki says quietly. “I used to steal them. Thousands of them – rare ones, common ones. I had a lofty ambition of owning a copy of every text in the universe.”

“Have you?”

“No, not even close. I've got a lot of them, though. I thought you might appreciate this little cache of mine,” Loki murmurs. The Doctor reaches out, grasping a book by the spine and drawing it from a shelf: he looks at it, paging through.

“There's blood on the pages,” the Doctor says quietly.

“A perfect metaphor for your life and mine.” It’s a little too cruel, and the Doctor gives him a lidded gaze.

“Stop it,” the Doctor says dryly, and Loki smiles at him.

“I've got a section about you, you know. Almost a shrine, really.”

“Fanboy.”

“That's me.” The Doctor looks up from the book, watching Loki, and before he can ask his questions, Loki answers pre-emptively, “I built this when I was- your age, perhaps. A little younger.”

“My age. That long ago.” The Doctor whistles. Something shifts in his face, a little bit of awe, a little bit of upset, perhaps. He’s so used to being the oldest in the room, in the building, on the planet, that sometimes it strikes him a little too hard when Loki reminds him he isn’t. “Why've you shown me this?”

“I've not shown anyone else,” Loki says quietly, looking up and away from the other man for a few moments. “My brother- My brother would never understand it. My children would burn it all down just to spite me.” The Doctor is staring at him, trying to comprehend and failing to. Loki looks to him, wondering what he should say, how he should possibly explain, and he says, with the barest hint of desperation, “I thought perhaps you might read it.” The Doctor stares at him for a long few moments, holding a book to his chest. He seems touched.

“I will,” the Doctor promises, with all the solemnity of a marriage vow.

“Good.” The Doctor looks at him, waiting. He knows what Loki is about to say, and has no doubt known since he saw Loki walk up and down the TARDIS console. The revelation there, of course, was that Loki had paid attention to the Doctor’s seemingly random movements and learned from them: the Doctor knows Loki well enough to show that such an admission of skill, of knowledge would be followed by Loki doing something drastic. It frustrates him that the Doctor doesn’t bring it up, for a reason Loki cannot quite classify. “I think you ought take me home now, Doctor.”

“Which home?” comes the question.

“Back to Earth. To Midgard.”

“Back to your empire.”

“Yes.” There is a long, significant pause. The Doctor sets the book down on a desk in the middle of the central walkway, and he is quiet, silent but for the breaths of his almost-human lungs and the beat of his two not-human hearts, and he is silent before Loki says, “Until the next time.” The Doctor looks up, and he stares at Loki for a second, shocked, terrified, and then he grins.

“Yeah,” he agrees. “Until the next time, I s'pose. When'll that be?”

“Why, are you not a Lord of Time? Silly of you to ask me.”

“I guess it is, yeah. Alright then. Pop in, and I'll have you home in time for tea.”

“I don't drink tea,” Loki says, and for a moment or two, the Doctor looks at him with a mixture of fondness and loathing. The mixture suits the features of his face, and Loki wishes he could have a photograph, but he can’t.

“I'm not surprised,” the Doctor replies, and tips his head in the direction of the TARDIS’ open doors.

\---

Loki listens to the thrum of that beautiful, beautiful blue box as she goes, taking the Doctor with her, and he sets his suit-jacket on the back of his chair, setting down at his desk to work through paperwork. The door opens, and his assistant stares at him. “Mr Svensson?”

“Mmm?”

“How long have you been in here?”

“Since the party.”

“But I- I just checked half an hour ago, you weren't!” Loki looks up, and he arches an eyebrow at her.

“What are you suggesting? That I invented some magical machine and teleported away?” The human falters. Disappointing, really. She lacks faith - perhaps he ought send her on a trip with the Doctor.

“Er, no, Mr Svensson. Sorry, sir. Good morning.”

“Good morning.” So small, these humans, Loki thinks as she walks away, and yet on top of his growing fondness for them he's beginning to develop a secondhand affection. He smirks to himself as he draws his tablet out of his pocket, folding it out and setting about getting a bit of work done – he's had almost a year of vacation now, hasn't he? Terribly, truly naughty.

But the Doctor is the most marvellous influence.

With that in mind, Loki opens up a program with which to sketch, smiles to himself, and gets himself to his next design.

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, hope you enjoyed that! Check [this link](http://dictionarywrites.tumblr.com/post/160853818533/request-commission-information) out if you’re interested in making a request.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [My Stars For An Empire](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13145718) by [DictionaryWrites](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DictionaryWrites/pseuds/DictionaryWrites)




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